America’s first family of jazz — patriarch Ellis Marsalis Jr. and four of his sons — were presented the nation’s highest jazz honor Tuesday night at the 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony.

It marked the first time the NEA had ever presented a group award since it launched its Jazz Masters program in 1982. The other 2011 Jazz Masters honored in the concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater were flutist Hubert Laws, saxophonist and educator David Liebman, composer-arranger Johnny Mandel, and record producer and author Orrin Keepnews.

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Arturo Sandoval performs at the Kravis Center. (Taylor Jones / Palm Beach Post)

Photos: Arturo Sandoval performs at the Kravis Center

Powerhouse jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval made this confession to his Kravis Center audience Thursday night.

“Every time I have to blow that thing, I feel pain,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at the trumpet he had just played so bracingly beautiful. “I can’t be specific about where exactly I feel pain, but you understand.”

The trumpet’s steely little mouthpiece, he said, never smiles, never says “I’m so happy to see you today.”

It may be an unrequited love for him, but for us, the beneficiaries of the instrument’s fantastically hot temper tantrums, it’s a glorious thing.
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By GRAYDON ROYCE

The question for Idina Menzel was standard boilerplate: Which of her two signature Broadway roles – Maureen in Rent or Elphaba in Wicked – spoke more to her?

Just as a parent never picks favorites, Menzel sliced right down the middle of this softball.

"They both taught me something I needed to learn about myself at that particular time in life," she said.

Pressed for a second opinion, she said the challenges faced by Elphaba (the green witch from Oz) are ones Menzel is still trying to work out in her own life.

"Things like your perspective on beauty and how you feel about yourself – self-esteem issues," she said.

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Organizers have announced dates for next year’s Newport folk and jazz festivals in Rhode Island.

The folk festival will be held from July 29 to July 31, and the jazz festival is scheduled to take place the following weekend, Aug. 5 to Aug. 7. Lineups haven’t been announced.

The festivals each started more than 50 years ago and are among the most celebrated annual concerts in the country.

Bobby Lee Rodgers' Green Room Jazz Sessions open Sept. 23 with the music of Miles Davis. (Courtesy Bobby Lee Rodgers)

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To hear Bobby Lee Rodgers get excited about his new project, you find out quickly that the Green Room Jazz Sessions aren’t exactly going to be a bunch of guys playing rote Miles Davis covers.

The sessions, which begin Sept. 23 at The Green Room, next door to Revolution Live and America’s Backyard in Fort Lauderdale, will feature the music of Davis, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery and Thelonious Monk, along with Rodgers’ own compositions and more.

“I’m putting a lot of effort into this, making sure what we play is developed thematically,” Rodgers said in a telephone interview. “There’s not anything that’s fluff. I’ve put in a lot more time into this than I have into my own stuff.”

Rodgers is better known in the jam-band sphere as a longtime member of the Codetalkers, a group he and Col. Bruce Hampton formed in Georgia who’d become a favorite of festivals. But once that band finished running its course in 2009, Rodgers decided to return to the sounds that got him seriously into music in the first place.
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The jazz singer and songwriter Abbey Lincoln has died in New York at age 80.

Known for her independent and uncompromising style, Lincoln made records and acted in films in the 1950s and ’60s, then saw her career surge again in the 1990s when she was a songwriter.

Her death was confirmed by friend and filmmaker Carol Friedman, who’s working on a documentary on Lincoln.

Lincoln had acted with Sidney Poitier and collaborated in music with the drummer Max Roach, who she married in 1962 and later divorced.

In later years, she had chart-topping albums with “You Gotta Pay the Band,” which she recorded with Stan Getz, and “Devil’s Got Your Tongue,” in which she rebuked some rappers, comics and filmmakers for profiting from the denigration of black culture.

Joan Cartwright leads Jazz Hot Line during the 20th anniversary of the SunTrust Sunday Jazz Brunch. (Veda Jo Jenkins / sflimages.com)

Photos: SunTrust Sunday Jazz Brunch

Despite hot temperatures Sunday, thousands of people turned out for the 20th anniversary of SunTrust Sunday Jazz Brunch on the Riverwalk in Fort Lauderdale. Produced by the city of Fort Lauderdale, this free event brings local jazz artists to the waterfront on four different stages.

Joan Cartwright & Jazz Hot Line performed on the Esplanade Stage, sharing the spotlight with the young talent of Sons of My-Stro, two young violin virtuosos, ages 14 and 17. Penn House Productions entertained the audience between sets with a twist contest and free ticket giveaways and Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler recognized sponsors for their contributions.

On the Connie Hoffman Stage, Blues Therapy and Jazz serenaded the audience while Jason Beach performed for those having brunch at the Peck Courtyard at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
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New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band will play the Coral Gables Congregational Church. (Photo by Shannon Brinkman)

By BOB WEINBERG

For almost five decades. music lovers have made pilgrimages to the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, where an elegantly shambling performance space on St. Peter Street echoes with the sweet and salty sounds of Crescent City jazz.

While the musicians of Preservation Hall’s famous band have evolved over the years — the great clarinetist Ralph Johnson died late in 2009, and bassist Walter Payton had a stroke in January — their commitment to preserving and passing on its signature music has never waned. On Thursday, the band kicks off the 25th edition of Coral Gables Congregational Church’s Summer Concert Series.

“I’ve been a fan of Preservation Hall jazz for a number of years,” says Mark Hart, artistic director of the series, which will also host jazz artists Ann Hampton Callaway on July 1, Nicholas Payton on July 29 and Ramsey Lewis on Aug. 12. “Their hall as a venue is very, very small, very intimate, which is like what we provide, and, since it’s New Orleans jazz, it’s so celebratory. So I thought it would be a great way to begin our 25th season.” The church’s all-star, 13-member teenage jazz ensemble will open.
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Leslie Gray Streeter remembers Lena Horne

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Photos: Notable Deaths in 2010

FILE -- In a March 7, 1982 file photo Grammy Award winner Lena Horne, center, is flanked by record producer Quincy Jones, left, holding his Grammy, and Dan Morgenstern, of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, as she displays her award, and the record that earned it, in New York. Singer Lena Horne, who broke racial barriers as a Hollywood and Broadway star famed for her velvety rendition of "Stormy Weather," has died at age 92. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm/file)

NEW YORK (AP) – Lena Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress who reviled the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom, died Sunday. She was 92.

Horne died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Gloria Chin. Chin would not release any other details.

Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her sultry voice, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success.

“I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” she once said. “I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.”

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub and among a handful with a Hollywood contract.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical “Stormy Weather.” Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her signature piece.

On screen, on records and in nightclubs and concert halls, Horne was at home vocally with a wide musical range, from blues and jazz to the sophistication of Rodgers and Hart in songs like “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” Read the full story

Perhaps the greatest thirty-three minutes of music ever recorded was released 45 years ago. It mixed hard bop and the free jazz style that dominated the genre in the late 1960’s. This thanks in part to the many album releases on the pioneering jazz label Impulse!

The best known artist on the label was John Coltrane, and it was his masterpiece, “A Love Supreme” that was released in 1965. Regardless of musical taste, this arrangement was, and still is, something to marvel at. I’ve always likened it to a prayer or meditation put to music. It’s a beautiful suite that everyone should own. In November of 2003 Rolling Stone released its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. “A Love Supreme” came in at #47, one spot ahead of “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” by Public Enemy, and right behind “Legend” by Bob Marley and the Wailers. At a time when Motown, The Beatles, and flower power ruled, by 1970 “A Love Supreme” sold an incredible 500,000 copies.
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